With former homeowners being forced back into the rental market, The Association of Independent Inventory Clerks has warned landlords to either be prepared for pets or look for the signs of undeclared pets.

Most landlords who do accept pets will increase their deposit, but many landlords won’t rent to tenants with pets at all. Tenants unwilling to part with their pets may well ignore their landlord’s request and bring them into the property with them, and then attempting to hide any potentially expensive resulting damage. Continue reading Pets are not a landlord’s best friend→

A strange case came my way today and I thought it a grand example of the sort of world I move in and an insight into the Kafkaesque madness that is the stock in trade of my day.Continue reading A Tale of Two Toilets→

Next year I will have been a landlord for 40 years and I am going to throw a boomerang at each of my good tenants via twitter (@landlordtweets) during the month of December. I am fed up of hearing tenants from hell stories, most of my tenants over the past 40 years have been great tenants and I am going to thank them all, past and present, for giving me financial freedom. Will you join me in throwing a boomerang at your good tenants?

If the boomerangs come back we might begin to hear stories about all the wonderful landlords that I meet everyday. Those who respect their tenants, those who know that it is because of their tenants that they have financial freedom, those who work hard to make tenants feel at home, those who perform little acts of kindness when tenants need support and friendship, those who take risks with tenants who would otherwise be homeless, those who tolerate tenants mistakes… Continue reading Landlords, Let’s Make December Celebration of Good Tenants Month→

“Respect seems to be like a boomerang in the sense that you must send it out before it will come back to you.”

I have been giving a lot of thought to the relationship between a landlord and his tenants. Many tenants have landlord stories and many landlords have tenant stories but sadly neither seem to want to tell stories in praise of the other. Why is this? Why is so there little mutual respect between many tenants and landlords? Why is there so little respect for landlords generally? Continue reading The Boomerang Effect for Landlords?→

After another bad few months for landlords in tenant disputes, the AIIC have issued more tips to help landlords in adjudications.

According to The Deposit Protection Scheme’s findings, June 1st to August 19th saw over 1,000 disputes with 60% due to damage to property. Cleaning costs played a part in 40% of the disputes and redecorating in 31%. Many disputes cited more than one reason, cleaning costs incurred due to damage for example creating the skewed figures. Continue reading Disputes Still Favour Tenants According to DPS→